Rethinking the Marketization of Australia's Employment Services

In Australia the dominant construction of citizen obligation for the unemployed has legitimated a host of policies and practices, including strong paternalism¹, punitive financial sanctions and tightly scripted employment pathways that allow little room for the exercise of autonomy. Moreover, the Australian Government has devolved responsibility for the exercise of rights and obligations to a OEquasi-market¹ network of private and non-profit organisations in the form of Job Services Australia. The institutional design of unemployment policy combined with the privatisation of employment services has created a number of unintended consequences over nearly two decades of reform. The helping relationship¹ has been commodified, front-line staff discretion has been reduced and the employment outcomes for the long-term unemployed have seen little improvement. This paper seeks to examine how

these processes and outcomes might be transformed so that employment assistance can become a key plank of a more just and respectful society. To this end, the paper will employ a historical and institutional analysis. I will argue that a new system does not have to abandon

cross-sector governance. Non-profits can play an enabling role in the field of Employment assistance, but they must be freed from compliance burdens and strong paternalism that has subverted their capacity for public accountability, social advocacy and a mutually beneficial alignment of employer and worker needs.